


summer without rain

by Ink_stained_quills



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:35:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27594911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ink_stained_quills/pseuds/Ink_stained_quills
Summary: Five times Adam said three words (and one time Ronan did).(1) - You confound meRonan’s hands close tight around his popsicle stick, wood clutched tightly in his fingers.  Ice crystals melt in his mouth.  His feet scrape patiently against the ground, and he eyes his shoes as they slowly come apart at the seams.  Beside him, Adam scratches a bug bite.Ronan’s eyes follow the movement.  Adam’s stay stuck on Ronan.  He hums, a trailing sound meant to encompass summer and clammy heat, and presses a single finger to the marks Adam’s nails have left behind.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 3
Kudos: 62





	summer without rain

**Author's Note:**

> Literally nobody's going to read this, but I re-read the series recently and these two have been living in my head rent free. Figured I could write a tiny fic for them as a break.

_(1) - You confound me_

Ronan’s hands close tight around his popsicle stick, wood clutched tightly in his fingers. Ice crystals melt in his mouth. His feet scrape patiently against the ground, and he eyes his shoes as they slowly come apart at the seams. Beside him, Adam scratches a bug bite.

Ronan’s eyes follow the movement. Adam’s stay stuck on Ronan. He hums, a trailing sound meant to encompass summer and clammy heat, and presses a single finger to the marks Adam’s nails have left behind.

Adam takes his popsicle stick and puts it in his mouth. Ronan places Adam’s into his ice cream wrapper, watches his lids shutter closed without looking at him.

He bites down. “You confound me.”

“He said in consternation,” Ronan narrates.

Adam takes the popsicle stick out of his mouth, places it in the wrapper, and throws only his own into the trash.

_(2) - This is fine_

“You’re an exhausting person,” Adam accuses him, lying on his back in the middle of the road.

Ronan knows he means it, just like he knows it isn’t a bad thing. For someone like Adam, who’s tired all the time, exhaustion is a state of being. He also knows that Adam needs someone to wrap up that exhaustion and push him into a hill-rolling contest.

“Hell yeah I am.”

Adam snorts. “Mind out of the gutter, Lynch.”

“Get yours into it, Parrish.” Ronan replies, swift and unyielding. He coughs, and a blade of grass blows from between his lips. Adam grabs it, grimacing at both the spit and Ronan himself, and wipes it off his fingers onto the ground.

He shifts. Adam is going to make a comment about grass stains in a few moments, and Ronan will roll his eyes, and they’ll bicker all the way back to the car. He wants to lie here forever instead. “Wanna get up yet?”

Adam exhales, considering. “This is fine.”

_(3) - You’re always distracting_

“You can stay.” Adam licks his lips, scribbling something into a notebook.

Ronan breaks open a fortune cookie. He’s gotten a hold of thirty, and he’s very much enjoying crumbling them between his fingers. “It says I’m supposed to be lucky soon.”

“Hmm,” Adam replies, highlighting something with intent, and crinkles his nose at something he must not understand. After a moment, the expression eases, face smoothing out. The highlighter is blue. Ronan clicks his tongue.

“Aren’t I distracting?” he mocks, reclining to lie on his back so he won’t look at Adam’s face. He tosses a cookie into the air, catches it, throws it again.

Adam reaches out and grabs it. “You’re always distracting.”

Ronan’s blood sings. He wishes it wouldn’t.

“It’s better to have a room I’m not alone in, anyways,” Adam says absently. He makes another mark on his paper. “Cabeswater tries to use my plants to talk. You make it quieter.”

His veins are alight with symphonies, oxygen giving way to music notes swirling through his cardiovascular system, spiraling choruses blending into the way Adam blinks his lashes.

_(4) - Close your eyes_

“If you look, I’ll smack you,” Adam threatens. “I don’t care if a branch hits you in the face, you’re going to be surprised and you’re going to like it.”

“I’ll like any surprise you have for me,” Ronan sniggers, and Adam growls, probably debating whether smacking him would be worth it.

Instead, he curls his fingers around Ronan’s shoulders and shoves him forward. His nails are a dull scratch against his t-shirt, his neck. Adam exhales onto his ear when he pushes aside a stray plant, the tail end of it scratching his face anyway. He keeps quiet about it.

“I’m gonna open my eyes,” Ronan threatens, waving his arms in an attempt to smack Adam in the face. 

Adam grabs his hand to get him to stop. “Close your eyes!”

Struck dumb _(when is he not dumb around Adam? dumb enough to get pulled in, dumb enough to stay, dumb enough to take notice of how his hand still hasn’t been abandoned)_ , Ronan lets his head lol back like a three year old instead.

“There,” Adam murmurs, sounding satisfied. Ronan opens his eyes to see a frigid pond, coated over with thin sheets of ice. Patterns spiral outward, tracing inexorably into the center, and he traces those same patterns onto the hand Adam’s probably forgotten he’s holding.

Adam grins, feral - it’s an expression not out of place on Ronan’s face, but he doesn’t think anyone else has seen it on Adam. It’s a good look on him. Then again, anything is. “Bet you won’t jump in.”

Ronan opens his mouth to protest, but then Adam’s throwing off his coat and taking the plunge.

“Jesus,” he barks, and dives after him.

_(5) - Concentrate, won’t you?_

“I think I’m dying,” Ronan complains, pushing the assignment away with his pencil as if it’s some contagious disease.

Adam laughs. “If you were dying, you’d fist fight the grim reaper.”

“Maybe I’d challenge him to a game of chess instead.” Ronan retorts. Adam shakes his head, smirking, and writes out a flowy equation. “What? I could have hidden depths!”

“I bet you do,” Adam mumbles smugly, then steals Ronan’s phone to take a picture of his own stunned face.

“I can just delete that,” he points out, dumbstruck. 

A shrug. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Adam is going to be the death of him, forget schoolwork. The boy in question looks up and raises a smug eyebrow. “Concentrate, won’t you?”

“You concentrate,” Ronan retorts, and thinks about the single unopened fortune cookie under his bed.

_(+1)_

They’re sitting on the pavement again, cold popsicles pressed to their mouths. Ronan bites into his, and Adam shivers in horror. He coughs out a crackling laugh. Adam eyes his own, unopened.

“So,” he starts.

“If you say it first,” Ronan says easily. “I’ll eat your popsicle.”

Adam scowls. “I paid for these.”

“I love you,” Ronan replies.

Adam, despite obviously anticipating this, chokes. Ronan watches amusedly as he tries to blame it on the popsicle he hasn’t bitten into. “That. Yes. Also.”

“Good thing you’re going into a public speaking job,” he deapans, and Adam smushes Ronan’s popsicle into his face. He pretends to frown down at it sadly.

“Have some of mine, if you’re going to be mopey about it,” Adam says gruffly. “Asshole.”

Ronan takes the offering, bites the top off, and hands it back. “We can share.”


End file.
